


Leave

by s1lverwren



Series: 12 days of christmas [1]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Mild Hurt/Comfort, aaron is mad and takes it out on emily
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:41:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27928441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/s1lverwren/pseuds/s1lverwren
Summary: "I'm leaving.""Of course you are, that's all you know how to do."In which Aaron Hotchner is tired and pissed off and takes it out on Prentiss.
Relationships: Aaron Hotchner/Emily Prentiss
Series: 12 days of christmas [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2045071
Kudos: 27





	Leave

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr saw it first. i do actually hate this one a lot but i'm not sure how to fix it

It was a bad day from the start. No one had gotten any sleep, all of them staying up through the night in a desperate attempt to find the unsub before he took another victim. It was a failure, and another kid was taken. When they did find him, Morgan and Emily split off, which left an easy angle on Morgan, and he was in shoulder.

They were all having a bad day. 

Emily and Hotch were silently cleaning the conference room where the team had set up for the week. Morgan was doing an overnight in the hospital, and the rest of the team had been sent away to the hotel to get some sleep. Hotch, who was practically inhuman when it came to loss of sleep, stayed behind to clean, and Prentiss joined him- she was far too worried with the events of the day to be able to fall asleep.

Aaron, fighting back a yawn as he placed down two steaming cups of coffee, glanced at his frowning counterpart. “What are you staring at?”

“Well, it just doesn’t make sense.” She looked back at him from the bulletin board. “Why Johanssen would stay in Cheyenne, I mean. With everything he went through as a teen, you would think getting out of here would be the first thing on his mind.”

Hotch raised a singular eyebrow and turned back to his pile of paper. “Yeah, well, some people don’t think like that, Prentiss. You should know that, we’ve seen it time and time again.”

Emily sighed as a response and took down the newspaper clippings detailed the horrors the unsub had gone through in his adolescence. She muttered a curse when the pin holding up a photo of a victim stabbed her finger. 

“So why did you do it?”

“It?”

Hotch nodded. “Leave Morgan. I gave you orders to stay together. Morgan’s reckless, he’ll push unsubs like this one,” he scowled at the board, “too far. That’s why I paired someone with him. Johanssen was far too unstable to be dealt with by one person. So why did you leave?

“I-”

There was a long pause as they stared at each other. Hotch nodded, waiting for an answer. Rather than answer, Emily stared at the dark circles under his eyes. They were a shade far too dark to just be from one sleepless night. 

“When was the last time you slept?”

He rolled his eyes and shifted his weight so he was leaning on the desk. “What does it matter? And you’re just trying to change the subject. Why did you leave?”

“I don’t know, Hotch! Is that what you want to hear? That I don’t know why I left Morgan?” she exclaimed, eyes hardening. “Because I don’t. We were looking for a ruthless killer, you’ve seen the victims. I felt it was best to be more than cautious when checking the rooms. Morgan went forward, I turned into a different room. And then there were shots.”

Hotch’s scowl somehow etched deeper into his face. Both of them were running on adrenaline and caffeine, the tiredness had long since fogged their brains. There would be an apology tomorrow morning, with soft words and gentle touches extending an olive branch. But he didn’t care right now. Right now, all he wanted to do was let out his frustration.

“Shots that led to Morgan being in the hospital. What would you do if one of them had hit Morgan in the head, killing him?”

Emily fought to keep the tears of indignation she felt bubbling to the surface back. She was _not_ going to cry right now. 

“Jesus, Hotch, don’t you think I feel bad already? Morgan is my partner, do you think I want him to be shot?”

The walls seemed to be closing in on them, and Prentiss could barely breathe. 

“Sure seemed like you did tonight.”

That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Emily had to leave the room.

“I’m leaving,” she told him, her voice wobbling a little. 

Hotch shook his head, regret not having reached him yet, and said the first thing that came to his mind, “Of course you are. That’s all you know how to do.”

Halfway out the door, she stopped, his words catching her off-guard. “What?”

“You leave Morgan now. You move all the time. You left after Doyle-”

“That’s not fair!”

Hotch was far too gone to stop at this point. “You can’t stay in one place for too long. The only constant in your life is this job, and that’s only because it’s always on the move.”

The door slammed on her way out.

Hotch collapsed into a chair, and his head fell into his hands. “Nice one, Aaron. That’s how you’ll get the girl, point out all her flaws and make it worse on an already horrible day.”

He scoffed and mussed his hair. The mess of the room loomed over him, and he stood up with a heavy sigh to clean some more of it.

Light footsteps sounded behind him, but he was far too engrossed in the menial task and his sulking to care. He reached up to grab a case file but paused when a soft voice floated in from the doorway.

“Did it really bother you when I left all those times? When I moved?”

Hotch spun on his heel and found himself staring into the same tired brown eyes that had been challenging him minutes prior.

“Well, yeah. Of course it did, Emily,” Wanting this shell of Emily gone, he joked, “I liked that apartment of yours.”

She did laugh, but it felt far more forced than natural. “Actually?”

His tone softened and he took a seat. “Actually. You shouldn’t have left Morgan,” she nodded in agreement, quickly swiping at her eyes, “but any of us would have done the exact same thing. I don’t blame you. I’m just tired and frustrated and I took it out on you. I’m sorry.”

She gave him a light smile, taking the seat next to him. “It’s okay.”

The look she gave him was rather indecipherable. Rather than dwell on it, he continued in his explanation. “And I don’t begrudge you for leaving after Doyle, especially since I helped you with it. Your life was in danger, and I wouldn’t have had you do anything else.”

Emily nodded, taking in his words.

“I don’t know, Prentiss. You just-” he interrupted himself with a sigh, rethinking his words. “You’re just gone all the time. You might actually be here, but you aren’t. Not really. And all I want to do is fix that. Because I just- I just want you to be happy. And I can’t help you be happy when you aren’t with me.”

“Aaron…”

Once again, he was too far gone to stop. “And I don’t know how to help you. That’s your issue. You are so afraid of getting hurt again that you keep anyone from getting close enough to help.”

Chapped lips were pressed onto his. Purely on instinct, his eyes fluttered shut and he reached a hand out to pull her even closer. Their lips moved in harmony, almost as if both of them had dreamed of this exact moment.

Emily pulled away first, and his lips chased after her, hungry for more. She stopped him, needing to breathe, by placing her forehead on his and laughing breathily.

“Is this close enough?”

He responded with a soft huff and kissed her again, grabbing onto something that he would never let go of.


End file.
